Heal through Grievous help

Classes Druid
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How do restoration druids deal with grievous in low level keys?

Im new to running keys and have achieved a +10 during last week’s affixes, but this week im lucky to heal through a +8.

I get the low keys expect players to stand in bad, not do mechanics and not put their kick button on their hotbar and im cool with those challenges as I learn - it will make me that much better when i earn my place in higher keys.

So when melee stand in sanguine or dps simply dont use defensives for AoE damage and drop half helath or more, what can i do?

With all my HoT up (rejuvenate, wild growth, green circle of goodness) and spread before damage hits im spamming regrowth and even with full stacks of tranquility, im struggling to bring the players - who continually take avoidable damage - up to 90% to clear grievous stacks. Trusting my HoTs doesnt work when grievous stack damage is more than the ticks of healing!

Only ilvl 250, and i do understand sometimes theres just going to be a run of bad PuGs. Id just like to improve to a point where i know theres nothing i can do better when groups play like that.

I appreciate that running +10 is childs play to many of you, and thats awesome. Just starting out with M+ its a hard earned achievement for me so any tips are appreciated.

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I’d say drop flourish and take up germination. That extra hot goes a long way with stacking mastery.

Pay no attention to trying to dps and just spreads hots. Learn when damage is likely to come out and pre hot everyone.
This includes tranq, dont tranq after damage has occurred, Do it before.

Germination is looked down on and not recommended in any guides because it is mana intensive, Low dps, and is heavy gcd usage. You’re going to hear a lot of people bash it. They are wrong.

Here’s the truth of it, at those levels with that amount of avoidable damage being taken, you don’t have time to dps anyway. Plus… mana is a non issue in m+ as you can drink as often as you need to. Tanks will often encourage it.

So, with a lot of pre planning and pre hotting and that extra mastery stack provided by germ, you can get ahead of the damage.

That being said…. You also need to learn what to heal and what not to heal.

Melee standing in cleave? Let them die.
Standing in sang? Let them die.

The occasional slip up is expected, and if you have the time and means to heal them, Do it. But if it becomes a repeated offense, the only way they are going to learn is if you let them die.

You can’t heal stupidity. Those mechanics will eventually one shot them in higher keys, so there’s no point in hand holding now.

Let them die.

If it kills the key. That’s on them. Not you.

It’s not.
Anyone who says otherwise is wrong. Lower keys are always a challenge for healers if the party ignores mechanics. You can only do so much.

Iv had more difficulty healing an 8 vs healing a 17.

Keep your head up, plan for the worst and you’ll never be disappointed.

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I support what the person above me said about germination. Ive only got like 7-8% mastery and I still think it’s worth it. This week in 24s/25s I’m taking germination, abundance, and verdant infusion legendary. I still pull 4-5k dps despite all these low dps options.

I know it’s not an optimal set up and like the guy above said, it gets bashed on, but I pug all my keys and players are not reliable even at this level. I take overgrowth as well which allows me to put like 25 seconds of full hots on the tank with verdant for the cost of 2 gcds which allows me to dps or focus on healing the rest of the group. Also, the swiftmend conduit synergies very well with verdant infusion. Since swiftmend doesn’t remove a hot, it buffs the swiftmend by every hot that’s on the target…it does like 30k non Crit healing with a couple hots on them.

This is extremely overkill for healing but I find it gives me my best chance of success while pugging. The “usual” setup just isn’t enough for bad groups or bad tanks and the combination of germination and abundance allows Druid to excel at something that it normally is weak at which is spot healing since regrowth will have a high chance of Crit and will cost low mana.

Liberally use innervate as well. Most people hang on to it far too long. Using it when you proc tree from tier is a good time since it will allow to pretty much heal through anything and you won’t have to worry about the mana. Also remember that when you enter tree you have a soul of the forest proc. Unless someone is almost dead I feel it’s best to use rejuv as your first spell as a tree since it will be double buffed.

I also notice you are necrolord. If you don’t use a weak aura that tells you who and when to use Adaptive swarm I recommend doing so. Regular adaptive swarm usage makes a massive difference in healing and it will be pretty much always on everyone if you use it correctly.

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If people are dying to Grievous, don’t be afraid to ask hybrid classes (that should already be doing this) to help off heal after a big pack is completed.

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Yeah, pretty much every class has some type of heal and damage reduction. At higher levels of gameplay, dps are more reliable at mitigating damage and healing themselves if they take a hit. Lock rocks in general are huge!

Just the other day I had a Paly tank heal me with LoH after I goofed a mechanic and I was big mad! Like bruh…. That’s my job!

The higher you go. The less healing you actually do. It’s weird.

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They aren’t wrong. Under perfect conditions it’s not optimal. Fortunately, we’re rarely under perfect conditions so use whatever you feel works best for you. If it’s germination, use germination. There was a long time that I refused to use flourish although the last few weeks I’ve kinda come around on it.

I second this. I posted a story last week about healing a 10 that I just couldn’t do it. 273 resto druid with plenty of keys under my belt and I just couldn’t do it. You can’t force your team to abide by mechanics and you can’t force your team to live. You can only do what is possible and hope for the best.

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TL:DR Version: You can’t heal stupid. :rofl:

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It buffs it by the amount of the HoT that it would’ve consumed if you didn’t have VI equipped, not all of them.

Also, Floral Recycling specifically buffs Swiftmend by the percentage of the remaining healing on the hot, based on duration. It asks you to consume a hot at near full duration to get full value from the conduit, but that’s contrary to how you otherwise would want to be using Swiftmend efficiently, and the healing gained is not worth the inefficiency. It’s just generally not a good conduit, even under perfect conditions with VI or otherwise.

Wouldn’t Photosynthesis be better for the same healing profile you’re trying to accomplish via Germination?

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With verdant it buffs it by like all of them, i’ve tested it and it does a crazy amount with it…and photosynthesis doesn’t do as well with struggling groups. I did a 23 halls yesterday where I had to heal through 6 full shard thrashes. There’s no way I would have kept everyone alive with photo but having germination and abundance allowed me to keep everyone alive through all 6. It’s crazy mana intensive but it works. Photo helps but it’s not as strong as having the extra mastery stack from another hot PLUS another rejuv.

EDIT: so I just tested it again to get some concrete numbers. (278 swiftmend conduit)

(swiftmend on a target with 4 hots - 2 rejuvs, 1 renewing bloom, 1 spring blossom from efflo)

No VI without conduit 18K
No VI with conduit 20K

VI without conduit 18K
VI with conduit 31K

These are all non crit btw.

That’s like a 60% increase of swiftmend healing if you have verdant equipped versus not having it equipped with these hots and of course my stats and ilvl.

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It’s not the most efficient for overall performance (healing and dps), but for pure hps, it’s unmatched imo. Even with Urh reducing flourish cd, you can’t beat 100% uptime of 18% + healing (based off my mastery)

Think about it… 2x all your hot healing for 8 sec every 1.5 min (less with urh)
or…
2x rejuv on the tank 100% of the time with 18% (varies) more healing.

The hot extend aspect of flourish is null and void for me as I get the same effect 6 times more often with VI.

…plus i get flourish through convoke leggo. :laughing:

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For sure it’s not the most efficient, but it allows you to heal struggling groups that you would have no shot at healing otherwise, especially this week with grievous. I tried early in the week running my “normal” setup with drought/circle + cenarion ward + photo/flourish and it just didn’t work well with a lot of struggling groups.

I actually did slightly less dps with the standard setup in a struggling group because they were taking so much more time and effort to heal. Normally I could heal someone to 65-70% and let the hots do the rest but this week the grievous stacks built up.

Flourish is really nice and will allow you to easily heal a ~10 second window of aoe damage, but in struggling groups you may have many moments where you need to do strong aoe healing and flourish isn’t available. Earlier this week I was in a 22 dos where a mask got off 4 rages with no urn. You have tree and flourish for 2 of them but then you’re screwed.

Yes, you’re losing dps with this setup but I’ve found it isn’t as much as I thought because you have so much extra time to dps. You’re still losing damage though and in a strong group your extra throughput is kinda wasted, but I feel that it allowed me to time some keys that I think I wouldn’t have had any chance at healing with my usual ‘standard’ setup.

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That’s where I’m at. I’m not big on cooldowns. Yea, flourish is great, but it doesn’t help if I have to wait to use it again while things are falling apart.

Mistakes aren’t scripted. They happen at any moment. I want a build that I can react with and/or prepare for.

That’s germ!

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Swiftmend + Wild Growth (with Soul of the Forest) is your friend. This example is probably one of the worst for promoting Germination.

If anything, VI leans into playing Flourish even more. A large portion of the value of Flourish isn’t just 2x hot tick speed, it’s the fact that Soul of the Forest and Nature’s Swiftness modifiers modify their respective heal for their entire duration, and being able to extend it with VI, into Flourish, into another VI can create some criminally long durations of massively buffed up HoT effects.

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i find anything above like a 22/23 dos fort swiftmend+sotf WG isn’t enough for a lot of rages. People have no defensives and even with 1 rejuv, photosynthesis lifebloom on u, swiftmend+sotf doesn’t seem to cut it. It’s fine if people are using defensives though…but people run out after multiple rages. That’s just me though…those masks are the hardest aoe thing to heal in m+ i feel.

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Well of course not just Swiftmend + WG, you’d have rejuvs, efflo, lifebloom and Cward, etc…

Also, for the record I’m not really team Photo, I’m more on the Flourish side, but in the situation you describe, Germination isn’t going to be the thing that makes the difference on a burst HPS check.

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Yeah it’s not gonna make that much of a difference in that situation, I just find it helps overall in struggling groups. When you don’t have flourish and you’re group is taking heavy damage I feel germination will give you the best chance and I find myself in that situation a lot this week while pugging alliance. I think the no voice comms hurts a lot once you start getting to mid level keys. When I’m in a strong group with communication I feel great about taking the ‘standard’ set up…I just don’t feel it gives me enough in struggling pugs.

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I mean…. Sure. I guess.

If you’re only ever using those on the tank.
Great.

I use them indiscriminately for unpredictable damage. What do I need to extend a buffed regrowth for a missed bone spike kick on that mage who’s now at full hp? It’s one and done.

It’s predictable incoming damage that I can prehot and buff my SotF buffed WG (and all other heals) by 18%.

Pretty substantial.

If you had a button that boosted all your healing on that target by 18% with no cooldown. you’d scoff at it?

K.

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I’m not scoffing, just pointing out other options. There’s an opportunity cost to that talent choice.

My mindset with Resto Druid is that I’m not looking to put myself into situations where I need to spam regrowth as an emergency. Resto is proactive, I want to set myself up to prevent that situation if possible.

Yes, I understand other players aren’t always great at staying out of stuff, but if that’s a major problem, especially at the 22-23 range like what’s being said, swapping to Germination isn’t magically going to turn a failed key into a timed key.

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So…. Germ?

That’s entirely the point of a germination playstyle. You’re not relying on cooldowns to pull yourself out of sticky situations. Just good old fashioned mastery stacking available 100% of the time.

That’s exactly what it does.

It requires more set up, more mana, and less dps, but delivers consistent on demand hps for burst windows/fights that last longer than 8 seconds like Shards in HoA or masks in DoS.

Flourish gives a nice burst window for those 8 seconds but then your SOL for the next 82 . #Feelsbad

Which is exactly what happens when flourish is on cd and you’ve got no more buttons to press.

Cooldowns like that are great for raids and boss fights with scripted damage windows, but outside of that you’re left with your pants down. Not a playstyle I enjoy.

If you’re in a solid group that doesn’t goof up often or stand in fire then yea, flourish is your best bet.

Its nice to pretend that the stars will always align and every cd is used for optimal uptime of hots on the tank for maximum hps while we dps.

Sadly for like… 90% of players, OP included, That’s not the case. Not sure if you caught that. He’s asking for advice for worst case scenario, not best case.

Germ is your best option for maximum hps when things go wrong.

Also….

Why are you talking about 23+ keys when op clearly stated….

Dial it back a notch, k?

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Go Night Fae if you’re struggling with healing.

Macro Nature’s Swiftness into your Convoke. Any Regrowths cast with Convoke will benefit from Nature’s Swiftness and not consume it. You can then do an additional Regrowth to consume it. The majority of the time this will heal your party to full from any health deficit.

If Convoke is on CD then Wild Growth followed by a Flourish

If Flourish is on CD Tranq.

Take Soul of the Forest for single spot healing when things go real bad. Swiftmend + Regrowth will cap any single person. At worse you can keep the tank and yourself alive long enough to finish things off and rez.

If you’re doing Theater of Pain and the party is letting the mobs stack the healing debuff it’s not something you can fix as a healer.